KPBS On Air
...and the wait did not deter him
June 1996
by Fernando Romero
When American Playhouse airs the movie ...and the earth did not swallow him on June 5 at 9 p.m., another episode in Paul Espinosa's life will come to a close. The producer and major promoter of the film, Espinosa has spent eight years on the project, from conception to completion to theatrical distribution and now to its ultimate destination, all the while producing several documentaries for public television.
Such is life for one of public television's most successful producers. Since arriving at KPBS 16 years ago, Espinosa has earned seven local Emmys and many national and international awards. Most of his work has concentrated on trans-border issues from the plight of the immigrant laborer to the stories of Mexican Americans who have left their mark on this country's history: "I see myself as a bridge builder," says Espinosa, who refers to himself as a Chicano because 'it implies political consciousness about the situation of the Mexican-American community' and consciousness of its lack of political, social and educational participation in American life.
"On both sides of the border," he says, "there is great prejudice amid discrimination about certain things, issues that have to do with just plain old ignorance with not understanding what "the Other" is all about. That's been the driving force hehind mv work.".
As an anthropology student at Stanford, Espinosa did his doctoral thesis on the behind-the-scenes operation of the Lou Grant television show as it started its first season back in the late seventies.
Believing he could just as well study human behavior in a television studio as in a remote South Seas island, Espinosa spent a year at Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises in Hollywood, recording his observations. The experience turned Espinosa's life around (and earned him a doctorate).
"I was always interested in the media and the impact of the media, and I was looking for a way of applying more critical insights into television production," he says. "The more I observed the process of the Lou Grant show, the more I thought. 'Gee, I might he able to do this.' I understood the power of the medium and decided to use it to inform and educate."
Espinosa set this course back in his college days. The filmmaker's long time friend and college chum, Leo Chavez, remembers, "Paul really wanted to tell those stories, that's what got him interested in anthropology in the first place. Twenty-something years ago, most of the stories about Latinos were pretty much negative. The media did not tell the stories in all their complexity. Paul wanted to use his academic training, his eye for detail, to bring a sense of evidence into play."
An intensely private man, Espinosa is reluctant to talk about his personal life (He will, however, admit to having a wife, UCSD professor of Chicano and Latin American Literature Marta Sanchez, and an 11 year old daughter Marisa). But Chavez, chairman of the Anthropology Department at UC Irvine, has no such qualms. "When it comes to his work, he's very serious, he wants to do his work well," Chavez says, "But he's still able to laugh and have a good time. In fact, he's a very funny person."
Espinosa still drives an old I960s Volkswagen "Fastback," a vehicle that most professionals left back in college. Chavez explains: "Paul is a pack rat. He hates throwing things out. He saves TV Guides for years and years and years. Clutter for Paul is heaven. He wants to have what he needs at his fingertips when he needs it. His wife has asked him if she can throw some things out but he won't let her. That's why he didn't get rid of the [Volkswagen]. His philosophy is "Why get something new if you can fix what you have and use it?"
The Volkswagen has not been getting much exercise lately. Espinosa has been flying to work, as he researches and assembles The U.S.-Mexican War, 1846-1848, a three-hour series that will air on public television sometime in 1997. KERA, the public television station in Dallas, is producing the project. Espinosa has been all over Mexico and nearly all the entire U.S. Southwest. conducting interviews with historians and searching through history vaults for details, while supervising the script and the nut and bolts of the video production. His tenaciousness, says Chavez, separates him from other television producers, "Paul talks a good game, plays a good game, and finishs a good game," he says.
Of all the highly praised work he has helped create, Espinosa has a special place in his heart for ...and the earth did not swallow him, a film which cost $1.9 million and was funded mainly by the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Playhouse, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Based on the novel of the same name by Tomas Rivera, the late chancellor of the University of California, Riverside, the film depicts the story of a young boy who travels with his Mexican-American farm-working family as it goes from town to town, eking out a living. The misadventures of the family end up hurting the boy, who loses faith in God and humanity. "It's set in the 1950s, but in many ways it is really today," says Espinosa, who grew up in a lower-middle-class Mexican-American family in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
"Some of the particulars have changed a bit," he says, "but the basic, central idea is that living as a migrant worker is a very difficult experience, one in which you're really treated as a second-class citizen, and are discriminated against and [forced] to live in primitive conditions in terms of housing, access to medical care, access to educational institutions. All those things are terrible, and to even survive them is a big deal."
As he speaks, Espinosa's face reddens. The plight of the migrant workers has been dear to him since his Stanford days. Despite his busy schedule, he has found time to remain active in causes near to his heart. He is a Founding member (and past president) of the San Diego chapter of the California Chicano News Media Association. He recentlv concluded a four-year term as a member of the California Council of the Humanities and was one of the first appointees to the City of San Diego's Select Board on Binational Issues.
But it is his focus on details, on getting the facts and getting them right, that most impresses his colleagues. Los Angeles independent filmmaker Severo Perez, who directed and wrote the screen-play for ...and the earth did not swallow him, says, "Espinosa is an enormously talented man. The reason I wanted to work with Paul was because he was making these extraordinary national documentaries. He seemed to be a good detail man and that's what film is all about. Paul did an incredible job."
Which should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen his award-winning work-most of which has aired nationally on public television-including the documentary The Hunt for Pancho Villa, which focuses on Villa's 1916 raid on a New Mexico town and the extraordinary U.S. expedition sent after him; Uneasy Neighbors, about escalating tensions between residents of an upscale community in San Diego's North County and the migrant worker's who live in the surrounding canyons; and The Lemon Grove Incident, which chronicles the first legal challenge to school segregation.
His new documentary on the U.S.-Mexican War "will be an eye-opener to both Americans and Mexicans," he says. "Much of what passes as historic fact about the war," he adds, "is nothing but "mythic ideas."
The Alamo, for example, that great Southwestern symbol of American valor and endurance, was, in reality, overrun without much ado by Mexican forces led by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Espinosa says.
As for Mexico's beloved "Hero Children," a group of very young cadets who supposedly fought to the last bov against Amencan troops as they seized Mexico City-the truth is that the
Americans encountered very little resistance and easily conquered the capital.
"So these are myths that are not even correct," he says. "We have a real opportunity to educate and inform audiences from both countries so they'll understand what really went on."
Spoken like a true documentarian.